WVU recap, fourth quarter

Let's get this over with. Previous entries here and here.



1. 2nd-12 on WVU's 46, Auburn in the spread. Burns keeps and moves outside, but Bosley (line -) can't keep his man sealed inside and he slides and tackles after three yards.

2. 3rd-9, Auburn's best drive of the second half--big play here. Spread. WVU stunts and it seems to confuse the interior of Auburn's line (-) --Bosley and Green are double-teaming one WVU tackle and he still knifes through to dive at Burns's feet as he throws. It's nowhere near Trott. Time for a 44-yard FG attempt from Byrum. Hold your breath.

3. You can let your breath out now. He missed. Hooked it left. Byrum (--) just doesn't have it this year.

4. WVU takes over on their own 27. White carries right on the QB draw, where McKenzie and Blanc (+) have stunted and Blanc has broken free of his blocker, forcing White to take a step inside and too close to McKenzie; he tackles for a loss of 1.

5. Same principals, vastly different result. Devine takes the ZR handoff and as he hits the hole, McKenzie (-) wriggles free and has the chance to turn and tackle him; Devine runs through it. Blanc should be in the hole, it appears, but he's taken one step too far outside and ends up grasping at air. Bynes had been cut, Johnson pushed too far outside, and Devine is free to bolt for 35 yards.

6. ZR handoff to Devine again, but for the first time all game Marks (+) has shoved his way into the backfield, forcing Devine to come center and allowing Bynes and Johnson to wrap up for a gain of 1.

7. A third straight ZR handoff to Devine, and this time Bynes and Johnson are blitzing; unfortunately they seem to be blitzing through the same gap, causing Johnson to slow up for Bynes. Stevens (-) still has a shot at him two yards downfield; he misses, and it's up to the trailing Coleman to tackle after seven yards.

8. 3rd-and-a-long-2, and Auburn brings the same six-man blitz with Stevens rushing on a delay, and once again the ball is long gone before any Tiger gets close to White. He throws to Dorrell Jalloh on a crossing pattern, who's being man-covered by Etheridge. Etheridge was picked as he came across the middle, giving Jalloh an easy catch, and that I can live with. Powers (-) and Etheridge (-) converging before allowing Jalloh to juke and then power his way past both of them, however, I can't. McFadden has a half-chance to tackle at the 5, but he was clearly expecting Jalloh to be down already and can't react in time. Ugly, ugly, ugly touchdown. 27-17, and if you think this team can make up a 10-point deficit in the space of a quarter, you have a very interesting method of football analysis you will have to share with me some time. This game is over.

9. Ah, but the charting shall continue. KO returned to the 24.

10. Spread on first down, indicating Auburn's desperation at this point. Burns tosses a screen to Tate and it looks like it might go for big yards, but Bosley's a little late getting out and Berry misses his block on the first defender anyway. Tate's slowed and swarmed. Gain of 1. (Line -)

11. Spread. Tate takes the ZR handoff and Pugh and the pulling Green give him two good blocks for a lane. Bosley and Berry miss theirs, though, and the pursuit holds it to a four-yard gain.

12. Spread. Burns back to pass, Ziemba gets absolutely torched and holds (line -). FWIW Bosley and Berry cap a completely mediocre three-play sequence by letting a WVU rusher past them on a double-team, forcing an incompletion from Burns.

13. 39-yard net for Durst this time. I'll take it.

14. Part of the reason Auburn's DTs have been so quiet this game is because with an unblocked DE on all of these ZEs, WVU can afford to double-team Marks, Doolittle, etc. This time Doolittle (+) is single-covered, though and he makes the most of it, shoving his man into the backfield and forcing Devine to swing around them into the path of the well-positioned Evans. It should be a loss, but Devine jukes his way around Evans for a yard.

15. WVU runs the little play where Sanders goes in motion and takes the handoff as he dashes past White, but not this time--they botch the handoff, and Goggans comes awfully close--and maybe should do more than just coming close--to recovering.

16. 3rd-12 and Auburn obviously has to get a stop for any prayer of winning this game. White keeps on the draw and gets tackled after two yards by the unblocked Stevens (+). Give-up-and-punt call.

17. Speaking of punts, this is WVU's first and there's a little over 8 minutes left in the game. Sigh.

18. Spread of desperation. Last gasp, here we go. ZR, handoff to Tate over the right side. There's a tiny crease out there, but Pugh's cut-block has only slowed rather than stopped his guy and Tate (-) rather curiously decides not to try and power past the guy but plows straight into Hawthorne and the corner he's blocking. Look, I know the guy's a decent back, but I just don't understand why he's taking carries away from Lester and Fannin. I'm not seeing it.

19. Spread. No one's open, Burns takes off, makes six yards. Auburn has still managed to go the entire game without throwing a single downfield pass over the middle of the field.

20. Spread, 3rd-4. Burns stands in and finds Hawthorne on an out. Hawthorne (--) drops it--there's no other way to say it--like it's hot. Thus ends any pretext to this game ending in anything other than a WVU victory.

21. Punt. Now, of course, Durst cranks the 54-yarder.

22. WVU lines up with both backs alongside White. He hands to Sanders, who trips over his tackle's legs as he tries to cut up the middle.

23. 2-back set. They run the lead-blocker ZR for Devine, and this is how this night has gone for Auburn's defense: Blanc (+) has shoved his way into the designed hole, forcing Devine to pull up and try to reverse field, where the closing Goggans is waiting on him. Of course, Goggans (-) misses the tackle completely and Devine has nothing but space in front of him on the far side. 29 more yards.

24. Screen to Jalloh, Stevens (-) is out there but tries to beat his blocker to the inside shoulder rather than forcing Jalloh back towards pursuit, giving up the corner. Jalloh obliges by picking up 15.

25. Jake Ricks (+) burrows into the backfield on a ZR, allowing Marks and Goggans to tackle for no gain.

25. ZRO, handoff to Sanders up the middle. F'ing infuriating, man: this doesn't really look like it's going anywhere, but Sanders sort of hides out behind the line as they slowly shove Marks and Ricks (-) especially a few yards downfield. Bynes flies past and then Sanders pops out for, somehow, a nine-yard gain before Coleman tackles from behind.

26. ZRO, 3rd-1, Devine just plunges into the line for the first.

27. ZRO, Blanc (+) deftly avoids a cut block and tackles Devine after minimal gain.

28. Whoops. Straight handoff to Devine up the middle, where thanks to 1) Bynes blitzing directly into the center 2) Pybus trying maybe a little too hard to cover the outside 3) a double on Blanc that shoves him far enough back that it takes out Evans as well 4) Etheridge lining up outside in man coverage, there is absolutely no one in white. Devine breezes 30 yards for the final embarrassing score. There should be minuses on this play, I'm sure, but I don't know who it would go to; seems like they caught Auburn in a bad look.

29. KO, whatever. Wait, not whatever: Fannin's banged up. Excellent.

30. Spread from here on out. Burns does a nice job on first down of finding some room to run when--stop me if I've told you this one before--no one gets open. 15 yards. Yay.

31. False start on Ziemba.

32. Burns connects with R. Smith for 10.

33. 3-yard pass complete to Trott.

34. Ziemba (line -) flambeed again by the WVU DE; sack. Ziemba held up well in the running game, but man, he's had a terrible time of it in the second half on pass protection.

35. Burns's Hail Mary is picked off and returned for, oh, 25 yards or so before this guy gets tackled. It's a good thing he is, because otherwise I would have done something horrible to him. Like, find his e-mail address and sign him up for, like, online physics and astronomy newsletters. That'd show him.

Plus/minus: The JCCW's first plus/minus tabulations follow. The philosophy has been to add pluses for noticeably good plays and minuses for noticeably negative plays, leaving out neutral and/or routine plays where, say, things went poorly/well because of positioning or playcalls or just plain good/bad work by WVU. (I also went back and assigned a handful of plus/minuses I clearly should have added before, as on the awful last play of the third quarter.) Your results are as follows:

Offense: Burns +6, Davis +2, "Line" +1, Trott +1, Billings +1, Lester 0, R. Smith 0, Hawthorne -1, E. Smith -1, Tate -2, V. Smith -3.

Defense: Blanc +3, McFadden +2, Marks +2, Coleman +2, Doolittle +1, Bynes +1, Clayton +1, Ricks 0, Powers -1, McNeil -1, Goggans -1, Stevens -2, Johnson -2, McKenzie -2, Carter -1, Evans -1, Etheridge -4.

Kickers: Byrum -2, Durst -2.

Final verdicts: There's obviously a ton of tweaks that need to be made to this plus-minus thing--for instance, when six guys rush the passer and none of them beat their man, none of them stand out enough to earn a minus, even though the play as a whole is a failure. Certain individuals aren't being portrayed accurately, either; there's no way Bynes should have a positive rating when he made the one excellent play on the interception and spent the rest of the game getting shoved around, albeit not in such obvious ways that he ever picked up more than one demerit.

Still, I think between this and the overall review, we can make some safe assumptions:

1. The biggest problems for the offense after the hot start weren't the spread or play-calling, but WVU adjusting and Auburn's deteriorating line play. The "Line" reading finished at +7 for the first half; it finished at -6 in the second half as there was no push against WVU's four-man fronts and the pass protection collapsed. As mentioned at the end of the 2nd/3rd quarter review, Ensminger generally stuck with the ace and I formations on running downs until Auburn fell behind by 10 points. With the line flailing and possibly tiring--could that 20-play drive have taken more out of them than WVU?--the heavy formations just weren't as effective.

That's not to say the spread was any great shakes, but on passing downs, there won't be any element of surprise and I'd just assume give Burns as much room to improvise as possible. Speaking of which ...

2. Burns was the best thing the offense had going. Strange, but true, at least excluding the power-running stuff as executed in the first quarter. Burns was accurate; Burns made things happen with his legs; Burns never made the killer mistake. Consider: on Auburn's only drive of the second half, the one that ended in Byrum's miss, the offense picked up four first downs and all four of them came either via a Burns run or an accurate Burns pass. True, his YPA (5.3) kind of blew, but it's hard to do much yardage-wise when you never even have the chance to complete a pass downfield. Which brings me to my next point ...

3. Auburn never tested WVU's run-obsessed safeties. Not once. Auburn's longest completion of the night was the 22-yard wheel route to Davis; the next-longest was the TD screen to Lester. The longest completion of the game to a WR or TE was a 14-yarder to Trott. Burns's only attempts to complete a pass longer than that to a WR or TE was the near-miss to Hawthorne along the sideline and the last-play Hail Mary. It's not hard to see why the ground game suffered in the second half; if the defense knows they don't have to keep anyone further than 10 yards downfield, it just doesn't leave a lot of room for an offense to operate.

Why was this the case? Take your pick: Ensminger never called for downfield passes. The receivers never got open on downfield passes. Burns could have thrown downfield passes but never did. Or, your most likely cause: all of the above. In any case, it's hard to see an offense this stunningly low-fi having much success against any team with a pulse in its front seven.

4. The tailbacks just aren't that special. I suggest you go back and count the number of times in this entire recap I write that an Auburn running back "broke a tackle." Nevermind, I'll do it for you: zero. I realize they're all banged-up except for the true freshman, but still, not one of them did anything beyond the minimum we'd expect of them and I thought Tate was simply subpar. If Davis is healthy, I would like to see him given a chance, please.

5. Auburn's linebacking blew. There's a reason every LB who saw serious time ended up in the negatives save Bynes, who I've already said should have: they just didn't make any plays. It says something when the backup defensive tackle finishes with more solo tackles than the starting middle linebacker.

6. Neither the d-line nor the secondary were much better. Coleman had a good game, Blanc made an impact in his limited time, and WVU mostly avoided McFadden; they're excused. Everyone else? Thumbs down. This includes Sen'Derrick Marks, who has too much talent to go an entire game making only two noticeable plays, double-teams or no. Note that Auburn's safeties finished at a combined -5, and McNeil's -1 is probably generous.

So what now? Offensively, we hope Ensimger finds some way of stretching the field--Ole Miss's secondary will give us some opportunity to, apparently--and that the line finds a way to keep things intact in the second half. Defensively, who knows. Getting Powers and Thorpe healthy again would be nice--I trust the true freshman in man coverage more than I would Etheridge, who struggled terribly with it last week--but who knows if that's going to happen. Otherwise? The defense and their coaching staff will just have to sack up and find a way to get it done.